Year: 2004

If Photoshop applied in the real world…

I’m reading Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact” for the second time. The first time was when I was given the book for Christmas, back in 1987. It’s been about 16 years, then, since I first made my way through the story. I saw the movie, of course, and thoroughly enjoyed it– but I didn’t realize how disparate the two are. They’re both very good, but different in many significant ways.

In any case, I’m nearing the end of the book now and I realized as I read that my interest in mathematics stemmed, in part, from some of the “puzzles” presented in the story. Of particular note is the conversation between Ellie (the protagonist) and her long-deceased father (simulated by the aliens). In summary, her father tells her that long ago, before even the aliens were making their way around the galaxy, some great civilization built a network of wormholes linking stars throughout the galaxy.

Although there’s an interesting real-life story behind that part of the plot (Sagan challenged his friend Kip Thorne to come up with a way to travel faster than light without violating known physical laws), the part that was intriguing to me was the statement by Ellie’s father about the nature of pi. He said the civilization who had constructed the wormholes had also left behind a message inside of pi. Basically, you had to calculate it to trillions of trillions of decimal places before you’d find the message.

“How can you hide a message inside pi?” she asks. “It’s built into the fabric of the universe.”

“Exactly,” he answers.

While there are interesting religious undertones here (Sagan was an athiest), it got me thinking. Is that really possible? Could some supreme being– call it God, or a race of long-dead aliens, or whatever you want– actually construct the universe in such a way that basic physical constants were messages? Or, more abstractly, that they held some deeper meaning?

In the end, questions like this piqued my interest in such puzzles. Several years after that, in college, I knew I wanted to dive deeper into the subject and ended up with a degree in mathematics. While I can’t say my major and my career was decided by reading “Contact”, I can definitely point to it as a part of the journey taking me where I am today.

“Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.”

— Seen on Slashdot

I love web ads like the one below. They’re hilarious simply because they’re so unreal. Take this one, which is advertising a singles’ site. Now, the advertisers know full well that statistically, men use the web more than women. Moreover, men who use the web an above-average amount of time are likely going to be less socially adept. Ergo, the chances are the kind of person who would visit a singles’ site is a geek.

So what do they use in the ad banners? Why, hot women of course! You can bet that most of the “3 million” people who are registered on the site are absolutely not hot.. They’re unattractive, socially inept computer nerds hoping to find a babe.

Okay, so I’m generalizing…

“The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.”

— Larry Niven

* You call them “terrorists” when their cause is one you don’t believe in.

* You call them “freedom fighters” when their cause is one you DO believe in.

* And you call them “guerrillas” when you aren’t sure.

An ongoing, classic example is the conflict in Chechyna. In the American media, the soldiers there tend to be called “guerrillas” or “rebels”. Never “freedom fighters”, and I haven’t yet heard them called “terrorists”. I think we just don’t know what to make of them. The Russians, on the other hand, refer to them quite clearly as “terrorists”.

It looks like a bunch of them seized a school down in Georgia (Russia, not U.S.) and the news stories about the situation refer to them as “guerrillas”. Still not sure, I guess. It seems to me that grabbing a school and holding a bunch of kids hostage isn’t a “freedom fighter” kind of thing to do…

In what has to be the best line from the Republican National Convention, Gov. Schwartzenegger told the delegates:

“To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say, don’t be economic girly men!”

President Bush, April 13:

“One of the interesting things people ask me is, ‘Can you ever win the war on terror?’ Of course you can.”

President Bush, July 14:

“I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror.”

President Bush, August 30:

“I don’t think you can win it.”

Personally, I think Bush’s statements for the past few years about how the U.S. can “defeat” terrorists and “win the war” against them have been naive at best and calculably misleading at worst. The very nature of terrorism makes it not so much a war as a constant struggle to avert individual situations created by any number of secretive groups. Thus, it’s actually refreshing to hear him (finally) admit that it’s not something that can be “won”, but rather that through persistence and vigilance we can make it harder for terrorists to exploit situations and carry out attacks.

John Edwards, August 30, responding to Bush’s statement:

“This is no time to declare defeat… we [he and Kerry, presumably] have a comprehensive long-term plan to make America safer.”

John Kerry, August 30:

[When asked if the ‘war on terror’ can be won] “Absolutely.”

Rudolph Guliani, August 30:

“We’ll see an end to global terrorism.”

Much as I hate to admit it, Bush’s return to planet earth is a nice contrast to John, John, and Rudolph– who maintain that terrorism can be defeated once and for all. Of course, these are nothing more than vague campaign promises, and Edwards’ statement in particular reeks of Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the fighting in Vietnam.

I guess all in all, I much prefer a president (or any politician, for that matter) who admits there are tough problems out there, and the solutions aren’t as easy as another “intelligence chief” or more security checkpoints or whatever. The terrorists are out there, they can’t be taken down with a single decisive action, and they sure as heck aren’t going to disappear any time soon.

Go Bush! Oh, wait…

My friend John was on a family trip driving from Denver to Seattle and back, much like we did a few years ago, and met a gang of motorcyclists at a campground. (When I say “gang” I mean a group of fairly nice-looking people all riding motorcycles, not a posse of big mean nasty-looking bearded guys on hogs.) Anyway, John told me he was making chit-chat with them over the campfire about where they were headed, and they admitted they didn’t really know.

“We just shoot the arrow at the barn, and paint the bullseye later.”

That’s deep on several levels. Sometimes I think I go through life the same way.

Now I remember why I never listen to the radio.

I had taken out the 12-disc CD magazine from my car (it was time to switch to some new CDs) and went out to run some errands this morning. I clicked on the radio and scanned some likely stations, and realized there are generally only two things you hear these days on the radio:

1) Ads.
2) Crappy music.

I guess I’ll stock up my CD magazine again…